§ 5a. Sometimes a so-called “girls’ feast” is held the day before the wedding day. As soon as she has risen, the bride dresses herself in her ordinary clothes, without any ornaments, and starts off to invite her friends, male as well as female, to her house to assist in making preparations, and to console her in her grief. Many of her girl friends have arrived at her house before she has returned home, and when they see her approaching they bar the gate, and do not allow her to enter, for she is going to be married, and has thus deceived them. The following dialogue takes place:
“Who are you?”
“Daughter Kate.”
“You are not daughter Kate, you are old woman[1] Kate.”
“I’m not old woman Kate.”
“We don’t know you. Our Kate is drunk, and carried away.”
After a long parley, during which the bride repeatedly affirms that she is really their unhappy friend Kate, whom bad men wish to separate from her friends, the girls at last relent, and admit her. As soon as she has entered the room she takes from a chest a shirt made by herself, and sends it by some old woman to the bridegroom. He must wear it on the day of the wedding, and also give a present to the bringer. In the afternoon the work begins, and the praising of the bride. She sits on a stool with her face to the stove, does not touch work, but bursts into tears from time to time, replying that she is unworthy of her friends’ praises, and without them she would pine away with sorrow. The following is an example of a song, widely spread among the Erza, from Kemeshker (Saratoff), such as is sung by girls in praise of a bride:
“Our Kitty is gentle as a lamb,
Our Kitty is good as the sun,
Our Kitty’s head is like a flower,
- ↑ This expression in Mordvin implies, Mr. Mainoff remarks, that after the carouse the bride is de facto a wife.
